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The Future of Holograms
D3 writes "A Slate article talks about the failure of holograms to really catch on and the future of using computers to create true holographic video ala Princess Leia. The article covers some history such as the fact that holograms have been around since 1947. Lots of great geek-pop references as well."
all i care about is....is it a holodeck? if not then bleh.
Yeahhhh Babyyyyy!!!
that invaded the arcades around 1991 or so?
Hey remember those arcade places?
Combining "holograms" and "geek-pop" in the same article summary conjurs up some awful visuals....
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Do not look into laser with remaining eyeball!
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
Sega Hologram. I can't believe the article actually went there. At least they pointed out that it was not in fact a 3-D picture. If you don't believe me, try playing one where someone removed the colored blocks.
You need not ask anymore why somebody would ever want a 500 TFlop graphics card that runs at 4 THz with a petabyte or more of video RAM. Imagine the computational power needed for high FPS first person holographic virtual reality games!
My rights don't need management.
It's that they aren't really useful yet. Yeah, we do have the technology to simulate a 3d image. You need shutter glasses or a bizarre narrow-field LCD display or some other fairly clumsy way to get at the 3d-ness of the image.
We do not have the holographic projector R2-D2 used for the famous Leia scene yet.
And that's why they haven't caught on. They're not convenient enough yet. I guarantee if you can duplicate R2's projector, they will catch on.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
A Slate article talks about the failure of holograms to really catch on and the future of using computers to create true holographic video ala Princess Leia.
Larger image, higher resolution, and less clothing, and they've got my consumer dollars.
So one day holograms became apart of our daily life.
Say you leave a hologram away message. You're not just going to stand their and recite your message/joke/song. You're going to have to put in some inflection, some hand movements, and some facial gestures etc. Pretty soon, we'll have hologram blogs with people acting out their favorite movie scenes. Hologram ads will be next. Than hologram porn. Than hologram gaming.
The future looks bright.
-Teiresias
The ingested food after some time will become part of your body. When you leave holodeck suddnely this part will disappear causing serious medical complications.
...we need a Futurama quote (:
Kif: This is the Holo-Shed. It can simulate anything you desire, and nothing can hurt you. Except when it malfunctions and the holograms become real.
Amy: Well, that probably won't happen this time.
Kif: Computer; Run program Kif-1.
Amy: This is so beautiful!
Kif: Yes. I programmed it in for you! 4 million lines of BASIC!
What happened to the promised hologram storage?
-- Bryan
The cheapest way to make a hologram: http://www.amasci.com/amateur/holo1.html
robots obey what the children say - TMBG
Speaking of holograms... for generating holograms without a laser (just your PC, a laser printer, and a transparency), check out the MedCosm CGHmaker.
Anyone know of a really hi-res output device?
From TFA: "You'll just have to hold your breath for another 20 or 30 years."
A drop in the bucket, baby. I'm living to 1000!
Sweet informative mod.
Holograms haven't caught on? They're used every day in vital economic activities. For example, without holograms, it would be impossible for Microsoft to produce legitimate copies of Windows; Microsoft would only be able to make worthless warez copies. The computer industry would grind to a halt.
Most things labeled as holgrams are crappy 3D effects. Such as those lenticular sheet 3D effects on magazine covers and breakfast cerial boxes.
This word missuse has really discredited those who have real holograms.
Then there are still image holograms such as the cheap Mylar prints that aren't too bad if lit right, but most people can't or aren't willing to get up proper lighting to display them effectivly. The fact that I can't just put a nail in the wall and hang it is a large setback.
The glass plate holograms are very expensive but when done right are frightenly real. Like one a friend of mine made of his head with a pulsed ruby laser. I really looks like a decapitated head in a box, in almost any lighting. He was showing it at a fleamarket and people would call the cops, or completely go histerical in horror screaming and crying, thinking is was a real head in a box (except it was just a flat glass palate)
Here is the big hint now.
Did you know you can digitaly generate a hologram compulationaly and print it on a laser printer, photographicaly reduce it and have it work as a hologram!
A hologram is really just a black and white print of the light interferiance patterns (that are much larger then the wavelength of light used).
You can even display these interference patterns in realtime using a LCOS chip if it's illiminated correctly,(mono chrome only) and product true holographic image. Limited to 1 inch across through and $5000 at the moment.
So if it were possible to get an LCOS that was 14 inches across it would litteraly be like a red tinted glass porthole into another universe. Will all the detail and resolution of looking out side the window of your office!
There was some very interesting experiments we did with this a few years ago. Maybe someday I'll have the time to write these up in more detail.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
[Engineering Log: Somewhere in the future]
"Well, we managed to create a holodeck with completely convincing graphics. The problem is that the AI chick we where all dying to meet has fallen for the marketing guy and claims not to be interested in nerds. Well, damn."
Real time, photorealistic holographic imaging is quite difficult. For one it requires more than just on color. Holograms are produced and re-created using monochromatic light sources. Not only you cannot have multiple colors you cannot even have different shades of the same color! Another complication is that for a sizeable holographic image you'll require substantial amounts of energy focused on relatively confined space. Your fire insurance premium are sure to rise faster than USS 1701D hops across the galaxy at warp 9.
Years ago I saw some work from Stanford (Bert Hesselink's lab, if I remember right) on volumetric displays. Basically they used a crystal as a "screen" for holographic projection. The density of the crystal was better than that of air and it represented a stable medium (compared to water mist of other vapors) to project a hologram. It sounds like smoke and mirrors but it was quite impressive and you could see the hologram in normal light conditions, not only in darkened rooms.
I think that with present technology, holographic imaging is not possible. Holograms, however, are a good basis for developing new kinds of dense data storage systems with true associate recall capabilities. Interesting work on this subject was done by groups at Caltech, Stanford, Colorado State, and UC San Diego in the 1990s. The February 1998 issue of the IEEE Computer magazine features a special section on this kind of technology.
In Issue 205 of ZZZ Online, we discussed the HelioDisplay. There are some really cool holographic systems out there, but they're expensive and not quite what I think anyone expected.
The cool think about things like the HelioDisplay is that it uses water vapor to make the projection. I didn't see any of that around Princess Leia. I think the biggest obstacle has been trying to make holographic projections appear in space without having some kind of hard media (glass, crystal, etc.) surrounding it.
It's coming, just give it some time. If someone ever discovers Hard Light, I'd like to talk to them.
There were some interesting papers at the 2004 Los Angeles SIGGRAPH on using planar arrays of cameras. Lots of people have tried stereo vision- because we have two eyes- but why stop at two? Cameras, projectors, and PCs have been inexpensive enough that you can experiment with redundant arrays of these, much like RAID revolutionized disk storage a decade ago.
Now what can you do with a planar array of cameras? You are seeing one viewpoint, or two, but *all* viewpoints, coarsely sampled. In some respects this is like a realtime hologram.
Marc Levoy's group at Stanford constructed an image "cube" of a scence- all depths of view and points of view. You can pluck out individual objects in a congested space like cocktail party or animals in a cornfield by computer synthesizing the appropriate focus. It almost seems like you can see through objects or arround corners.
Two other groups performed wide-angle realtime 3D TV (without eyeglasses). You have all the viewpoints all the time. Another group used an insect-eye approach using a special lense array and camera on each arrays. Then realtime computing would rearrange the pixels to present a 3D image.
Theres many other ideas to explore out there, if you liberate your thinking from the point of a view of a one or two eye creature.
The strict conditions under which holograms are made greatly limits what you can generate images of. It isn't hard to make holograms, but to make bright, interesting holograms is more of an effort. If you only have a continuous source (such as a laser diode) the hologram has to be made in darkroom conditions, and vibration and temperature changes must be kept to a minimum. Exposures are quite long too - with the process I use, small plates are exposed around 10-15 seconds. Holographic Optical Elements and interferometry are some useful things that can be done, however a 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 inch reflection hologram holds limited fascination for most people, regardless of what you have recorded there. Some people are amazed when they see holograms, others couldn't care less.
==
Anyone know of a really hi-res output device?
How about a dvd burner? That has some pretty damn good resolution.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
Everybody remembers the Pricess Leia "hologram" that was really just a movie optical effect. But nobody remembers the REAL hologram that appeared in a major movie in 1975, two years BEFORE the first Star Wars.
Near the end of Logan's Run, Michael York's character undergoes an interrogation surrounded by surrogate projected heads that rotate and repeatedly drone catchphrases like "There is no sanctuary." Those heads are not optical effects. They are real, physical holograms of Michael York, made earlier and installed and properly lit on-set as the scene was filmed. Although they give the appearance of being animated, they are really a standard mylar-based hologram which was captured using a rotating slit; on-set, walking around the hologram would make it appear to move.
I've always wondered why this technique was never expanded upon. It satisfies the basic criteria, of being mounted into a cylindrical shape so that the entire audience may surround it. Surely by now some clever folks should have been able to figure out some way of using double-scanning slits or somesuch to allow each horizontal slice of the cylinder to represent one moment in time, while the entire cylinder was pulled vertically like movie film. Is there some elusive but fundamental piece of hologram physics that prevents this? Or it is just that nobody has actually tried it yet?
Robotic instead of holographic sex, but you get the point:
Mother: Billy, do you want to walk your dog?
Billy: No thanks, mom, I'd rather make out with my Monroebot.
Father: Billy, do you to get a paper out and make some extra cash?
Billy: No thanks, dad, I'd rather make out with my Monroebot.
Girl: Billy, do you want to come over tonight, we could make out together.
Billy: Gee, Mavis, your house is across the street. It's an awfully long way to go for making out.